III
LADY ANN SPENWORTH TOUCHES RELUCTANTLY ON DIVORCE
LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion): I have been brought up in a different school, that’s all. “Whom God hath joined. . .” I don’t ask any one to share my feelings and I’m not so foolish as to say I won’t receive people who have taken a step which is at least legal, however much one may deplore the present ease of divorce. I do indeed try to differentiate in my attitude towards the guilty party, but in this I am more than ever “ploughing a lonely furrow,” as my boy Will rather picturesquely expresses it. . .
Nowadays it is unfashionable to heed the teachings of religion; but I should have thought that the least consideration for patriotism, stability. . . My father’s maxim was that family life is the basis of the state and that, when once you sanction the principle of divorce, you are undermining the foundations of the commonwealth. So I have at least been consistent. . .
That is perhaps more important than you think. The cynic cannot see that one’s prin-
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